Wednesday, March 12, 2008

well, i lied... i didn't check in the next day after the sonic youth show as planned. sorry...

my annual australia visit has been a whirlwind. lots of music, travel, food, beer, and of course all my good friends entertaining me. i'll try to give you a gist of what's been going on over the next few days as i try to remember the good times had.

the sonic youth show was incredible. the scientists opened the show and holy shit, they still rock. kim salmon looks demonic after all these years. i love that old australian psych stuff. when the youth arrived onstage, they indeed played all of 'daydream nation' front to back. i forgot how long that record really was. it took em 45 minutes just to get to side 2. seeing and hearing those songs brought back so many memories. not only were sonic youth one of the reasons for pavement starting a band, but the fact that early on we got the pleasure of touring with these legends helped us to see what it was to be a band. and sonic youth are still doing that today. mark ibold was in town as well playing bass on the encore. mark had a broken toe and was gingerly walking around, but still had that round smile we all love. we got together the next day for some lunch at peligrini's in melbourne. and then went and checked out the nick cave retrospective, which can i say... is pretty unbelievable. it chronicles nick's life from childhood through his 'boys next door' and 'birthday party' years all the way up to today. there are insights on how he writes his songs and included were books from his library and numerous journals written over the years. pretty damm impressive!

i got to see this all over again, at least the scientists and sonic youth shows, in adelaide a few days later. they played the laneway venue and we all came up the night before to hang in 'radelaide'. some people will differ with me, but i like this city. maybe it's the climate or the mountains coming down to the sea, but it just appeals to me. oh wait, i know. it's the home of coopers. and let me tell you, i had a few that night.